''Sweep It Into Space'' is the twelfth studio album by

alternative rock Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...

band

Dinosaur Jr. Dinosaur Jr. is an American rock band formed in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1984, originally simply called Dinosaur until legal issues forced a change in name. The band was founded by J Mascis (guitar, vocals, primary songwriter), Lou Barlow ...

, which was released on April 23, 2021 through

Jagjaguwar Jagjaguwar is an American independent record label based in Bloomington, Indiana, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Jagjaguwar is a label included in Secretly Group, which also includes ...

. The first single from the album, "I Ran Away", was released on February 23, 2021, with a music video for the song being released on March 3, 2021. A music video for the album's second single, "Garden", was released on March 31, 2021.

Background

Originally scheduled for release in mid-2020, the record was delayed due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. The album was recorded at Amherst's Bisquiteen in late 2019 following the group's West Coast/South East tour.

Lou Barlow Louis Knox Barlow (born July 17, 1966) is an American alternative rock musician and songwriter. A founding member of the groups Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion, Barlow is credited with helping to pioneer the lo-fi style of rock mus ...

wrote two of the twelve songs, with the only other musician credited aside from the group being

Kurt Vile Kurt Samuel Vile (born January 3, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He is known for his solo work and as the former lead guitarist of rock band the War on Drugs. Both in the studio and during liv ...

who played

Twelve-string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

on "I Ran Away".

Reception

''Sweep It Into Space'' earned a great deal of praise with an overall 80/100 score on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. Charley Ruddell of

WBUR-FM WBUR-FM (90.9 FM) is a public radio station located in Boston, Massachusetts, owned by Boston University. It is the largest of three NPR member stations in Boston, along with WGBH and WUMB-FM and produces several nationally distributed programs ...

called the album "lively and homespun" and said "The album isn’t meant to build on anything the band has already done, but instead revive the spontaneity and DIY of a tight rock band making a rock record." Brad Cohan of the ''

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by ...

'' called it "the best of their version 2.0 output." Ed Condran of ''

The Spokesman-Review ''The Spokesman-Review'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Spokane, Washington, the city's sole remaining daily publication. It has the third-highest readership among daily newspapers in the state, with most of its readership base in ...

'' singled out Lou Barlow's contributions calling them "two of the album’s finest cuts."

Track listing

Personnel

Dinosaur Jr. *

J Mascis Joseph Donald Mascis Jr. ( ; born December 10, 1965), better known as J Mascis, is an American musician who is the singer, guitarist and main songwriter for the alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. He has also released several albums as a solo art ...

– lead vocals (1-4, 6-11), guitars (1-4, 6-11), production, sound engineer, bass (5, 12) *

– bass (1-4, 6-11), backing vocals, lead vocals (5, 12), guitars (5, 12) * Murph – drums, percussion Additional personnel *

– production, guitars (2, 4, 10), backing vocals (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) *

Greg Calbi Gregory Calbi (born April 3, 1949) is an American mastering engineer at Sterling Sound, New Jersey. Biography Greg Calbi was born on April 3, 1949, in Yonkers, New York, and raised in Bayside, Queens, New York. He graduated in 1966 from Bish ...

– mastering * John Agnello – mixing * Justin Pizzoferrato – sound engineer * Marc Seedorf – sound engineer * Mark Miller – sound engineer * Joe Nino-Hernes – lacquer cut * Miles Johnson – layout *

Andy Hope 1930 Andy Hope 1930 (born Andreas Hofer) is a German artist. Since 1998, most of his work has been signed "Andy Hope 1930" (although at that time the artist was still named Andreas Hofer).Barbara Fischer, ''Universum - Multiversum, Künstler Kritische ...

– artwork

Charts

References

{{Authority control 2021 albums Dinosaur Jr. albums Jagjaguwar albums